[rtkwe]

Definitionally if they're "pushing it near the top" they're not only using FIFO, there's a priority ordering involved...

My guess is there's stuff in progress and maybe they need to arrange access to or setup the readers for a tape that old and of potentially unknown format.

[nish__]

Yes it's probably better to finish in progress stuff first.

[rtkwe]

So much of this is old and potentially delicate and they don't have unlimited space to work in so they'd have to pack up some other in progress digitization project to setup the tape flux digitizer and maybe have to arrange to get the correct one for this type of tape too.